


The Valiant and the Dragon

by arda_fata



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: A Bit Not Good, Ballerina, F/M, Fingon's an ass, First Kiss, First Meetings, Forced Kiss, Good Intentions, Instant Dislike, Nostalgia, Points of View, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 04:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11752386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arda_fata/pseuds/arda_fata
Summary: During his life in Beleriand, Findekáno had faced pretty much everything. Orcs, Wargs, Balrogs... and, of course, dragons.Several centuries afterwards, the last thing he expected to find a lady with a draconian temper. Much to his amusement, he gets not only to enter the dragon's lair but also to toy a little with her.Meanwhile, she has just one question: Who does this rascal thinks he is?





	1. Chapter 1

He was not certain what exactly had brought him here, maybe it had been the rumors and even those might not be cause enough to visit again this out of the way house.  He had simply gone for a walk and his feet had taken him this way out of their own volition. People rarely ever came here, except for the occasional group of children who enjoyed playing the clearing before the house, ever since the days of the Two Trees.

The rumors had begun two years ago, when the old house was restored from a ruin to a habitable place. 

This house had belonged to the half-brother of his father. This was the house… where his cousins had lived. Where he and Maitimo had become best friends, where Irissë and Tyelcormo planned their next hunting trip, where Macalaurë had taught Findárato how play harp, and where many other memories had taken place here.

And then, around six months ago, a group of hooded people had been smuggled into the house.  The fact that they were all women, apparently from the second born, had become a subject of major gossip in the city after two elleth had been summoned to serve and teach each of them.

The Fëanorian brides… or so they were rumored to be.

He much doubted that after everything that had happened, and all the havoc they had created, any of his cousins would ever be released from Mandos.  He was pained by the fact that he had forever lost his best friend, but he could not deny that Maitimo had gone searching for his fate, and this was a fate he could not rescue him from. And on that same line of thought, who knew what had become of Macalaurë?  

And who knew for certain what the designs of the Valar were?

His eyes ran over the tall windows, turned into mirrors by the darkness inside, wondering if the maidens who now swelled here knew the story of the house.  He much doubted it unless their handmaidens and teachers had told them.

He winced, trying to bring his mind back to the present. He should go back home and put his mind someplace else… this was foolish, it was no use to linger here…

A green projectile passed above the fence and went straight inside an open window of the second floor.  A loud chorus of groans made him turn around, half expecting to see Ambarussa, Angaráto, Aikanáro, and Arakáno standing a few steps behind him, as they had been when they were children.

They were not.

Instead, he found a group of seven unknown children who stared at the house as if it had become a monster.  He guessed the whole legend that surrounded this place had only grown with time and no one had troubled to set the record straight. Why would they, anyway?

It matter not, he decided, it was unimportant, something of a past better left forgotten.

“Good afternoon, little ones,” he greeted them and they grinned back at him.

“Prince Findekáno,” one of them answered him; the rest stared at him almost in awe.

“You know, my cousins and I used to fly balls inside that window when we were about your size nearly all the time.  Will you not go find it?” he asked them with a gentle smile.

The shook their heads, scared again.

“They said the house is haunted!”

“And that now there are witches in there!”

“And they eat children!”

“And turn them into orcs!”

Fingon threw his head back and laugh heartily, amazed at words of the children… witches in Fëanáro’s house.  If his uncle had heard that, his face would have been priceless.

“Would like me to get it back for you?  I’m not scared of witches,”

The children nodded eagerly at the offer and he grinned at them before jumping over the fence under their intent looks.  If the design of the house had not changed much with the renovations, then it would be easy to recover the ball and get out undetected.

He and all of his cousins and siblings had experience sneaking in and out of this house… out of his father and uncle’s house as well.  Arafinwë lived for the most in Alqualondë and his house in Tirion had been usually empty.  Only Finrod and Maitimo had mastered escaping Finwë’s palace unnoticed, the rest always got caught one way or another.

He walked to the house and placed his foot on the frame of a lower window for impulse before jumping up and reaching out to hang from the lower frame of the window where the ball had flown in.

A bittersweet feeling began to settle inside him as he recalled all the times he had done this as a child and during the following years.

He shook his head once and placed his feet against to wall to push himself up and inside what had been Nerdanel’s drawing room, expecting to land on the floor.

He landed on a bed…

An occupied bed…

What?

It was not that he expected the room to be the same, but he was not expecting it to have become a bedroom either.  The body next to him shifted and he heard a groan.

Findekáno raised his eyes and found a pair green eyes staring back at him… shiny and pretty, round and large.  Her drowsy and sleepy gaze became alert and angrier with each passing second.

“Please do not scream,” he begged, giving the woman on the bed his most genial smile.

She narrowed her eyes and mouthed his words as if she did not know their meaning, she probably did not speak Quenya at all. Her eyes shot open when she finally caught up to the situation.

“¡Sinvergüenza!” she snapped and pushed him against the wall and window before running out of the bed, giving him a privileged view of her naked back side, to wrap herself in a dressing robe.  What had she told him? He had no idea, but she was decidedly angry.

She turned around, arms crossed, and glared at him.

She looked attractive when she was angry, he decided, a lovely dragon.

She had a long thick mane of black hair, mostly wavy with humidity.  She was long and lean, tall, taller than his sister was, maybe a little underweight, but she was strong with marked muscles in her arms, shoulders, and legs.  Her olive skin was soft and silky, taken care of, as well as her hair.

From what Fingon could get from looking at her, this was a vain, ill-tempered woman, who knew herself beautiful and liked to further her beauty.  The kind of women males searched for vain pointless flirtation, but for little else.  Those made bad mothers and even worse wives… not that he was looking, but still.

Her feet, however, those were a disaster.  He had never seen feet so deformed before… only in the slaves that had managed to escape Angband.  Whatever had happened to her to have her feet in such condition?

He had obviously been staring, because he was returned from his trance when her pillow fell forcefully against his shoulder.

“¡Salte! Argh… ¿Cómo se dice? ¿Cómo se dice? ¡Afuera!”  She yelled, pointing towards the door.  He did not understand a word her tirade, but he got to his feet and walked carefully around her as if she was an angry dragon. She looked like one, as well, as she followed him with her eyes, sharp as daggers.

“Out!” she did seemed a little pleased with herself when she managed to yell the last word.

Findekáno snickered, embarrassed, as he walked outside.  He was not in the habit of jumping into beds of sleeping naked women… nor was it a habit he wanted to adopt, much less with one as angry as this one, thank you very much.

He shot her a last look before stepping out of the room, noting her cheeks were burning in embarrassment.  By her nakedness and the semi-wet state of her hair, she had probably bathed and then fallen asleep before he so rudely fell on her bed.

The green ball was a few steps away, having rolled outside to the hallway that opened down to an inner garden.

He reached it in a few long steps before returning to the room where she was still glaring at him. Two ellyth had joined her and they stared at him in alarm.  He was not supposed to be there… much alone with their nearly naked mistress. If they spoke, it would be a scandal… and he would never hear the end of it from his mother and grandmother.

He winced tiredly, thinking of the whole ordeal, “Please, ladies, I know how this looks like but I just came for the ball” He showed them and they nodded, clearly relieved, “I would appreciate your silence regarding my presence, here”

“Just leave!”  The woman snapped, crossing her arms over her small breasts.

“Lady Sarah, this is Prince Findekáno,” “You must not speak to him like this” They tried to explain but she waved them silent.

She was a tyrant to the service, then… why was he not surprised?  Oh, yes, she had that dragon dame air around her.

“I do not care who is him… he is a rude intruder, should not be here” She told them, glaring at him.  Findekáno tried not to laugh at her broken language, it would not do well to anger her further. She might scream and alert more people of his presence.

“I apologize for disturbing you, Lady Sarah,” He bowed to her, a sardonic smile on his lips, before walking inside the room and past her and her handmaidens, heading to the window, but he stopped suddenly before leaving and turned around.

“Wait, just for fun,” he told Sarah, taking a step towards her, deciding to see if he could irk her just a little bit more now that he was nearly out of danger.

Fingon buried a hand in her humid hair and kissed her deeply and fast before running to the window and jumping out with the ball secured in his other hand.

He laughed merrily as he landed safely on the ground and her angry tantrum reached his ears along with the maids’ scandalized reactions.

He threw the ball back to the children and one of them grabbed it before the lot of them ran away, scared from the screams and unintelligible curses of the “witch”. 

Fingon turned around and found her leaning outside the window, glaring down at him.  A dragon, indeed…

She was amusing, and she looked pretty when she was angry.  He was certainly coming back to see if he could find out more about her.  But no more than a flirtation… irate dragons only brought trouble if kept close for too long.


	2. Chapter 2

Sarah’s morning had been exhausting.  It had been filled with lessons and more lessons, in history, etiquette, many uses of many herbs, fencing and dancing.  Fencing she had learned to love, since it resembled dancing up to a point, and dancing was her passion.  She wanted to learn all she could about all kinds of dances. 

The rest of her lessons though, she dreaded.  Learning new languages had never been her forte, and Quenya, this new language everyone spoke here, was making suffer more than any other language she had encountered before.  Her native tongue was Spanish; she had learned English because it was basic in modern world, French because of the Ballet and out of necessity.  But those languages she had wanted and needed to learn.  Quenya was being forced on her and she was having more trouble than the rest of the girls for it.  She needed to study harder or she would fall back from the others. 

She had escaped back to her rooms as soon as she could.  They had been given the afternoon off and she intended to catch up on much needed sleep and rest. 

Her maids were nowhere to be seen as she entered her bedroom.  She wouldn’t wait for them. She would simply take a bath, put something comfortable on and move on to her long awaited and much desired nap.  She could not study any more when her brain was turned to jelly.

Sarah walked into the bathroom and began to prepare the tub.  She undressed as the bathtub filled.  Her body hurt and her head ached. A deep sigh left her lips as she sank into the hot water, soothing her body and, to a point, her head.  She wanted to stay in there forever and not think… not think about the past, not think about the future… and most certainly, not think about the present!

She opened her eyes and stared at her body, particularly her ugly feet on the other side of the tub… her ugly feet that she was so proud of. Ballet was her passion and her body showed the signs of more than 20 years of her life dedicated body, mind, and soul to it. She had been, for nearly seven years now, in the corps of the Paris Opera Ballet.  Few could boast of such an achievement and she was proud of being able to do so.  Or had been, since she much doubted she still had a career six months after disappearing without a trace.

She would rather not think about that.

It hurt too much to consider everything she had sacrificed for it. Time with her friends, with her family, her health, her childhood, her teenage years… she had never had a stable relationship in her life and she had no friends outside the Ballet world.  Yes, some of the other dancers had boyfriends and girlfriends and fiancés and husbands and wives and even children, but she had not had time for that.  She had danced every day as if her life depended on it… some had even called it an obsession.

And now it was all for naught.  It was all lost… She did not even want to think about the message Sergei had left on her phone… a secondary role in Scheherazade.  She had landed a secondary role! She was finally making it out of the background and now…

No one would ever hire her again.

Sarah took in a deep breath to disperse the pressure in her nose and cheeks that forewarned about crying fit and focused only on cleaning her body and her hair.  Thinking of that would only hurt her more and it would change nothing.

Once she was done scrubbing herself, she emptied the tub and rinsed herself with the shower.  She wrapped a towel around her body and walked back into the bedroom and into her tiny walk-in-closet, pulled a nightgown out of the drawers and walked back to the bedroom.

She sat on the bed with the nightgown in her hands and stared at it. Sarah was too damned tired and could not find the strength to put it on. With a sigh, she threw the towel to a chair close by and stared at the nightgown, almost hoping it would gain life of its own and do the work for her.  This was absurd… she couldn’t stay naked, she had to get dressed. The last thing she needed was to catch a cold.

This was not decent… anyone could come in and see her.  Yes, there were only females in the house, but still…

And now she also had to lift her head from the pillow.  When had she fallen down to the mattress?

She was so tired and the bed was so comfortable and the bath had relaxed her beyond her own expectations.  Sarah struggled to keep her eyes open but it was a lost battle and sleep soon claimed her.

Her dreams were filled with mirrored studios and lines of dancing women in different spandex attires, all of them wearing pink ballet slippers.  There were feathers and tulle skirts and silks and tight small bodices that enhanced the shape of her body and her movements, as well.

This was her world. This was what she knew and wanted.  The place in life she had dreamed of her whole life. She felt comfortable here, and these dreams that were more memories than anything soothed her.

The bed moved and she frowned in her sleep.

Why did her bed move? Why were they troubling her?  She wanted to sleep, she was exhausted, and she had worked her brains and skin off nonstop for the past months.

Sarah raised her head, blinking sleep out of her eyes and found herself face to face with the most handsome man she had ever seen. She liked this dream… her sleep addled mind decided… she liked him… he was hot.

His eyes were greyish blue and his features were elegant and masculine.  His hair was a thick dark mane tamed in golden braids that probably fell down to his waist.

He was nervous… why? She could not tell, it had been so long since she had been around men.

That was when her brain detected something was wrong… terribly wrong.

 _He_ should not be _here_.

 _She_ was _naked_.

And while yes, being naked in bed with the handsomest man she had ever laid eyes on was not all that terrible an idea, she damn sure wanted to be fully aware of the particulars regarding why and of the identity of the man in question. A surge of rage sat in her belly as her drowsiness faded fast.

He grinned at her and told her something she did not understand.  Damn her luck! And damn her stupid brain that failed to understand! 

What did he meant? What had he said? He seemed to be asking for something, but she could not, for the life of her, understand what.

_Never mind what he wants! I am naked! There is a strange man in my bed!_

“¡Sinvergüenza!” she snapped and pushed him against the wall and window to keep him away from her and jumped out of the bed, reaching for her dressing robe or whatever covered her naked body from his eyes first. 

Once she was decently covered, she turned around to face him, feeling furious and more secure than she would have in her birthday suit. But what she saw when she turned around only stoked her rage.

Insolent rascal was checking her out!

And, apparently, he was appalled at the state of her feet.  She did not mind, though, few people had a different reaction and if they did not like it, they could deal with it.

_Ok, pretty boy, show is over._

Sarah grabbed her pillow and brought it down with all her strength over his shoulder.

“¡Salte! Argh… ¿Cómo se dice? ¿Cómo se dice? ¡Fuera!”  She yelled, pointing towards the door.  She did not care that he did not understand or where had he come from.  The only thing that mattered was that he was gone as soon as possible and she could forget about the humiliation of being caught naked and off guard.

He got off the bed and circled around her, as if she was about to jump and rip his face off.  Wise of him, she felt tempted to try.

“Out!” she finally remembered the word she wanted and that soothed her wounded ego a little bit.

He laughed as his cheeks turned red and walked outside the door. What was it that he found so damned funny?  He surely was a pervert, jumping into a lady’s bedroom like that.  Some Peeping Tom who had had the bad luck to get caught.  He had no shame… that was why he was laughing so much.

Sarah could feel her cheeks burning but stood her ground.  She only wanted to crawl under the sheets and cry, but she was not about to display any form of weakness before him.

He left the room and returned a few seconds later, carrying a ball that had come from God only knew where as her maids entered the room. Probably alerted by her screams… at least she was not alone with the rascal, but that did little to calm her nerves.

The astonished look on their faces only served to confirm the obvious. He should not have been here at all.

He winced, probably weary at the idea of more witnesses to his horrible behavior, and spoke to the maids. She could barely understand a few words he said, but she was smart enough to realize that his presence was related to the green ball and that he was asking for their silence.

The ball had probably flown in through the window and he had been the idiot chosen to recover it.  Her brother and cousins had been through that more than enough times.

_Stupid men and their stupid soccer!_

That however, was no excuse for his presence in her bedroom.  Instead of sneaking around, a decent person would have knocked the door and asked for the ball.  But if she had deciphered anything about him at all so far, it was that he was not a decent person.

“Just leave!”  Sarah snapped, crossing her arms over her small breasts and trying to hide them from his view.

“Lady Sarah, this is Prince Findekáno,” “You must not speak to him like this” Her maids tried to explain but she waved them silent.  She did not care for excuses or about whoever he was.  If he was, indeed, a prince, then he should act like one.

 “I do not care who is him… he is a rude intruder, should not be here” She told them, glaring at him.  Sarah held back the urge to punch him as he tried to keep from laughing.  She had trouble with language, so what?  It was not as if she did not know it or as if she was not trying to solve it.  Once again she felt the need to cry in rage and humiliation, but held back.

He said something to her of which she only understood her name and bowed to her.  His infuriating smile plastered to his face as he walked back to bed and the window.  She just wanted him to be gone as soon as possible.

He turned to face and spoke again, taking a step towards her.  Sarah felt a rush of fear at what he might do to her when he grabbed her by the back of her head and kissed her deeply. His tongue caressed hers and he sucked on her lips before letting go as suddenly as he had grabbed her and disappearing out the window.  

Sarah stood frozen on her spot for a few seconds before breaking down and screaming the only thing she could coherently muster at the moment. “¡Hijo de la chingada!”

Tears began to fall down her face at last as she leaned outside the window to watch him give the green ball to a group of small children that ran away scared.  And he just laughed all the way.

Sarah curled on her bed and hugged her knees.

She felt vulnerable and exposed, angry and impotent.  A part of her even felt dirty… violated… it was not fair.  She wanted to scream and rage and punch something.  Instead she hid her face in her arms and cried. One of her maids, whose name she could barely pronounce, sat next to her on the bed and wrapped an arm around her.

The other left in a hurry, look for someone or something.

Her maid’s arm around her shoulders was some comfort for Sarah, but it did not fully erase the feelings of rage and sorrow in her chest.  Sarah did not care who he was, she only hoped that rascal would stay well away from her.

Her other maid returned with the matron, speaking in hushed fast voices, apparently relating the tale from what had just happened.  Sarah was not sure she wanted to talk about it, but she had to. If she wanted to wanted Prince Obnoxious to be kept well away from her, she just had to.

 

**Author's Note:**

> None of the other stories has been abandoned, I swear it. They are just moving at a slower pace than I hoped. I apologize.
> 
> This is the prequel to another story that is set in the same universe that Dark Desire. I will not be uploading the rest for a long while. Until I am further into the plot of Dark Desire, of which I hope to upload a new chapter this weekend at the latest.
> 
> Thank you all so very much for your patience.


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